Some Kinda Faggot

Teo

You just haven’t met the RIGHT man.If I wanted a man, I’d get myself a REAL MAN.You know this IS the women’s room?Police, can I see some ID?What are you? Some kinda faggot?We’ll see you out in the parking lot, faggot.

I live in a world that gave me two choices—
live in a female body and die at my own handsor
begin to live as male and die at theirs.

I was always a gender transgressor—I will always be a gender transgressor.
They did not like me as a girl—they like me even less as a boy.
I am not a straight white man, my queerness invisible to the naked eye.
They tell me they might let me live if I never speak up. If I sit complicit in my silence, while they shout their misogyny, their homophobia, their transphobia—their ugly hate.

If I keep my mouth shut maybe it won’t be me to die today—maybe it will be you. Can I live with my own deafening silence?

No.

I will not live in fear. Today I will feel fear but it will not be my place of residence.

Today I may feel fear, but I will also feel joy. I will feel at home in my own skin for the first time.
Today I will not barely manage to keep the gun away from my temple—today I will no longer think of the gun.